Philosophy

Stoicism

Stoic philosophy is fundamentally a philosophy which believes in virtue ethics. It believes in 4 cardinal virtues: justice, courage, temperance, and practical wisdom

It also emphasizes however that ideal actions are ones that are both virtuous and bring desired results. However, as long as you do your best to achieve those results, you are doing fine, even if you fail to do so

A useful way I like to think of it is to separate the qualities of good/bad and right/wrong, with the former indicating virtue (or lack thereof), and the latter indicating any other judgement of value. Ethical dilemnas would fall under the latter, while personal values would fall under the former

A good action then is any action done in accordance with what you truly and honestly believe to be right, while a bad action is one which directly goes against what you honestly believe to be right. Knowingly doing wrong in other words is an obvious bad, while unknowingly doing wrong is just naivety that deserves forgiveness

With virtue being the highest good and intention to achieve right being a part of that virtue, whether or not the ends justify the means depends on whether the ends are deserved if achieved via the means. I will explore this later.

It also views such ethics and virtue as extending not just to others, but to yourself. In other words, it uses the classical definition of ethics rather than the modern definition.

Importantly, stoicism believes virtue is by far the highest good, at least in the way it defines virtue. Other values are not only allowed to be held by stoicism but required to be, as you can't have virtue if you don't believe in anything.

The Issue With Stoicism

While stoicism has done me tremendous good, it's not meant to do much more than justify virtue and cope with hard times. It's not that different from Christianity in this respect. It defines good as doing as much right as you are reasonably capable of, which is genuinely useful, but it doesn't define specifically what is right or wrong, instead encouraging the follower of stoicism to decide that for themselves. This is my attempt to do so, to the best of my ability, using different philosophies which attempt to do so

The Issue With Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is a philosophy which believes any action is ultimately right as long as it maximizes happiness/pleasure of everybody. Any net gain of happiness/pleasure is considered right under utilitarian beliefs. I have two main issues with utilitarianism, however:

1. There are too many obvious moral wrongs that cannot be refuted as wrong from a utilitarian lense. The two I can think of offhand are raping somebody who happens to enjoy it, and an angry mob torturing and murdering an innocent individual. In both cases, the obviously immoral acts do objectively create a net gain in happiness. The former, despite being a serious violation of rights, has hurt no person and only pleasured them. The latter, despite doing serious harm to one person who did nothing wrong, has benefitted many more people's pleasure and happiness. Obviously both of these are demonstrably wrong because of the human rights violations they consist of
2. Utilitarianism fails at its own goal, since it is fundamentally consequentialist and unforgiving of the well-intended but wrong. If our culture was a utilitarian one, which it arguably in many ways is in the modern world, most people, including myself, would be regularly and horribly anxious out of fear of screwing up and fundamentally betraying their own philosophy, even if it is due to factors completely outside their control. This anxiety is why, ironically, utilitarianism is unutilitarian to believe.